[Iscool]

who commissioned him to prepare the first complete Latin translations of the four gospels, St. Paul's epistles and the Psalms from their original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts.

Really??? So Jerome had Paul's original writings, letters written by David and Job, and the original Aramaic written Gospels...

Seems a little odd that your church would have preserved Jerome's writings but been so careless to lose those 'original' autographs...

Uh, I guess Jeremiah was lying then, in his writings...

[Pyro7480]

Seems a little odd that your church would have preserved Jerome's writings but been so careless to lose those 'original' autographs...

You know about those things called wars and disaster, particularly in Italy, don't you?

[Mad Dawg]

I don't get what you're saying. I'm not on top of the history of the individual writings, the actual pieces of paper. But when I say "the original Greek" I don't mean the original piece(s) of paper but a (usually edited with footnotes and variant texts) copy.

Are you saying

1. That Jerome claimed to have the original pieces of paper, "autographs" of the Apostles and Evangelists;
2. That the church still has the original pieces of paper that were handled and written upon by Jerome?
3. That anybody, say, 1,500+ years ago knew how to preserve parchment (dried lambskin) and paper?

Even modern non-archival paper only lasts a few decades, and that's in houses with heating and air-conditioning. I guess I don't understand what claim you think that Jerome made and which turned out to be false.

[Berlin_Freeper]

The “original texts” were probably passed down from generation to generation by means of copying them to new material. Since they were of such important interest to the people keeping them and such items decay easily - I would expect that to be the case.

The fact that Jerome was commissioned to prepare the first complete Latin translations of the four gospels, St. Paul's epistles and the Psalms is proof at how careful “my Church” (actually it is God's Church) was at the time.

Careless would be making the senseless accusation of “lying” based on a ridiculous idea that the absence of “originals” from thousands of years ago is proof that people lied.